Windy City rampage: 19 shot overnight in Chicago

Americans turned to New York early Friday for a dose of doom and gloom, but the murder scene outside of the Empire State Building wasn’t the only mass shooting site in the country during the last few hours. In Chicago, 19 people were shot overnight.

In the midst of a surge in shootings in the Windy City that have occurred in recent weeks, police officers in Chicago, Illinois were once again busy responding to reports of shots fired late Thursday and into early the next day.

Two 14-year-old boys, one 15-year-old boy and a 19-year-old woman are among the injured in Chicago last evening after a drive-by shooting in the city’s South Side shortly after 9 p.m. sent eight people to the hospital.

Within only 30 minutes, at least four separate shootings left 13 people injured, including several teenagers. By Friday morning, 19 people in all had been shot in Chicago during the evening hours, with police reporting zero fatalities.

Thursday night’s shootings are not unusual in Chicago.

Chicago’s Red Eye newspaper reports that 15 people were killed in the city during the week ending August 22, including six homicides occurring at one point on a single day. At the time, the city reported 40 homicides in the month of August, already surpassing last year’s tally of 37 with still two weeks to spare.